Silent Night
by Adriane Clane
Summary: Please, listen to me. Just this once, I need someone to listen. Slenderman, Master, whatever you call him. That's what this is about...or rather, it's about the people who encountered him. The ones nobody remembered. And, mainly, I suppose it's about me. My name is Adriane Clane. And I am alone.
1. Prologue

{ T}

E

When I look out my window in the morning, letting the coffee's sweet, sweet smoke take me over, I sometimes wonder about the trees. Are they really what they seem to be? Maybe, but since the events that have unfolded in my recent years I am no longer as…I've forgotten the word again. That's the third time this week.

"Hey, Hey! Addie!" A voice comes through my television now, where I keep the tapes on replay. Constant. White noise to me. Or, at least, it should be. Still, I turn to the sound. "Come on, keep up! We can't wait around in the woods all day!"

"Don't bug her. She'll manage or she'll—"

"Now, now, Anna, let's not talk about that here." The teasing voice went on, "How depressing." I shift, looking back down at the coffee. I think about the trees. What kind of secrets they had once held. The things that made their sparkling, dew-covered leaves seem like well-guarded mysteries. Secrets I, so foolishly, had decided to turn over and unfold. The ones I wished I hadn't. All my regret and terror for the future. All of this, contained in a reflection that stares hollowly back at me within the ceramic collar of my cup of solid black coffee.

This all started a few years ago. Or…maybe only a month ago. I can no longer remember such silly, pointless facts of time. The only things that haunt me now are the memories, the ghosts, my regrets, the whole story, as Annabelle relayed it to me from the very beginning. So, I must record these things. For myself, at the very least. Lest I forget one day and come back to this journal.

To preserve for a brief moment what little of me is left.

I shall begin.


	2. Chapter The First

T

As I mentioned before, I can no longer recall when this all first started. I do remember the weather though. It tugged at my winter jacket in a haze, begging me to be more modern and keep up with it. Sunshine and green leaves. Weeds grown thick over the sidewalk. An entanglement of tulips and roses and briars just beginning to approach the garage door. Maybe it was summer. Maybe it was spring. My entire being screamed in excitement at the prospect of letting go of an old life; my senior year was nearly over. I was almost free.

For the moment, however, I was caught somewhere in between senioritis and a fervent yearning to do my best. I hopped in the car that sat in the driveway, touched by some un-Godly being of rust and decay, and put it into gear. School, I said to myself, school, school, school. This could only mean a few things. The thing that weighed the most heavily on my mind at that second though was this: Friends.

Now, at this point in my life, my entire being existed purely on the pivotal ability of eating dry cereal with a soup spoon and pretending to look over job articles in a browned newspaper. As far as I could tell, the world was a very pessimistic place to live in. It made me feel better to know that if I failed—at life—someone might remember me. My dearest companions might be able to carry me memory on in my place. Sure, if I died in a car accident on the way to school I'd never become a journalist, or wear button-down trenches with nice-looking hats, but at least they'd remember that I'd wanted to do that.

Not that I was morbid. Driving just made me think of dying.

The road rumbled beneath me on my way to school. A nice little private place. Shorts and skirts and polo's required. On the way from my back-alley house to the institution, however, I made several passes through little fields and picket fences and brief fringes of wood-lands. I peered at them through my peripheral while keeping my hands on the wheel. On days like this, when the sun filtered sweetly through the mossy bark and birdsong floated through the breeze like flower petals, it was hard to believe that little Suzy Walker had died here a couple years back. I contemplated making a pit-stop at the nature walk on the way to my destination. It was on the way. I had time. I didn't need to tell anybody. But, better judgment won out. I sighed as the dirt-and-stone parking lot disappeared in my rear view mirror.

The forests and pinpricks of sun eventually opened up into a blaring screen of light and grasses. Right across the hill there—right around that small bend—that was where the school was; along with the rest of the town. My town was a small one, like my school, and my house, and my family, and my college funding. It was a town of cute, white, picket fences and colorful shutters on alabaster-paneled duplexes. A town where, each Christmas, the streets lit themselves up like candles in the night. Now, caught in the middle of spring and summer, it was acutely hot and pungent. Scattered clouds filled the sky. Nearly forgetting, I turned into the school's parking lot and chose a place. Got out of the car. The door popped shut behind me. I walked onwards.

* * *

"Hey, Adriane," A voice called my name. I looked to its owner; a boyish young man with pasty-brown hair cut neatly around his forehead and ears. Just beating school standards.

"Jesse." I responded, a natural impulse that occurred whenever I saw the face. Jesse Adamms was never one for pointless talk.

"Yeah, hi." He laughed, his green eyes narrowing in humor, "I was just wondering if you were coming to the club meet tonight. We're having it outside today, near where the woods touch the football field. You know where that is?"

"Yes and yes." I responded, not getting the joke if there had been any. My tone was flat and tended to drip with boredom sometimes. A critical flaw of mine. I hauled up my backpack and pointed to the outer pouch. "I brought my camera. We can record that video for the school fair. How 'bout it?"

"Sure."

"Who else is gonna be there?"

"Just May, Kim-bee, me, Tyler..." He paused, "And you, Ms. Adriane Clane. Oh, and the supervisor."

"Figures." I sighed. I went through the list of names in my head. May Fischer, Jesse's girlfriend. Anywhere he went, she'd be too. They were attached to the hip. It was cute...to a point. If they got too mushy, I'd just pick up and leave. Then there was Kimberly Adamms, Jesse's little sister. Although, they were so drastically different it was hard to call them siblings. Sure, their main features were the same. But, whereas Jesse could—most of the time—be loud and funny, Kim was just straight-up quiet. That given, she was the one who ended up taking care of their seven other brothers and sisters most of the time. She and I were in some of the same classes. Kim-bee, as many liked to call her, could have been called at one point something that resembled my best friend. Lastly, and certainly the least, there was Tyler Carson. I couldn't get a handle on him. Prone to explosions of anger. Emotionally aggravating. Inconsolable. He was still my friend, but I tried as best I could to not be alone with him.

When I finally had finished my mental catalog of all those people, I looked up and noticed Jesse had meandered down the hall. He waved at me from afar.

"See you there!" He shouted.

"Okay." I shrugged, and went back to my business.

* * *

Our little meeting outside the school went as expected—horrible. So I mostly sat on the sidelines and tried to avoid being in any of the shots. The club, to my memory, wasn't that popular. Nobody wanted to be in an improv group. Heck, we barely preformed in front of crowds anymore. We'd grown so small since we first conjured it up from our vivid imaginations. No matter that, though, we still had to provide evidence of our perpetuating existence to the student committee in time for the school fair. It was probably the next week.

Not a lot went on. I recall basking in the fading sun after school hours, complaining about the auditorium and why we couldn't be there. Kim sat on my right side, nose buried deep in a mystery novel of some sort. Jesse and May fiddled around with my camera. Tyler brooded about family problems.

It was mysterious at the time that, when my brand-new camcorder was returned to me, it was broken. I looked it over, turning it around in my fingers, listening to the ebbing conversation. But there was nothing wrong. The audio and visual checked out fine. The chords, I mean. So, there was really no reason for them both to be tearing like they did.

"I'll get it fixed." I announced, placing it back in my bag, peering up at expectant faces that had gathered all around me. I took a moment to adjust my short, dirty yellow hair. It was so thin that it didn't matter. I couldn't see any better than I did before. "You didn't drop it, did you?"

"No." Jesse frowned. I pressed my lips into a thin line, then turned to May. Her girly little blonde locks framed her face, and her freckles, perfectly. The absolute picture of innocence, that one was.

"Did you?" I asked her.

"No." She said, confused, shaking her head. I nodded, and saw Jesse shoot me a dirty look from the corner of my eye.

Suddenly, Tyler shot up.

"Geez!" He yelled, louder than usual, "These fricking deer are giving me the creeps! Why are they so close to the school?"

"What do you mean?" Kim muttered. Clearly, she couldn't care less. "I don't hear anything."

"You didn't hear that?" Tyler gestured to the trees behind us both. "It was loud as a steam-engine! I think you must be deaf!"

"Deer don't come that close to humans." I stated aloud, "I was probably just the wind."

"Or a ghost." Jesse offered, still joking, "I bet it was Suzy's ghost."

"That's ridiculous." Kim snorted, "And completely irrational. There are no such thing as ghosts."

"Maybe." A sighed, "If there are such thing, I wish they'd stop screwing around with my video camera." I checked the time on my phone, easily accessed from my pocket. 7:34. It would be getting dark soon. "I have to go."

"Aw." May said, "We were going for ice cream later. It's such a nice day, Addie."

"I really have to go, though. My dad's gonna kill me if I'm not back before dark."

* * *

I never took the camera to the repair shop. But I did look over the footage. It was blurry, and Jesse didn't make the best camera man in the world, but it was enough. Darkness had long since closed down on my room. Curtains pulled. Bed unmade as I sat by my desk, furiously cleaning up whatever frames I could on my laptop. A glow softly etching the room out of nothingness. My keys sitting on the bedside stand, still in the same position I had tossed them there in. Slowly, something emerged from those few seconds of interpretable film. I didn't sleep that night. I should have. I didn't.

In the woods behind me, there had been a shadow. Not even a shadow; a distinguishable figure. A man. In the woods. The woods little Suzy had been murdered in.

I remember, shivering, thinking of how much I wished for that case to have been solved. And thinking of reasons adequate enough to explain away the fact that I hadn't even noticed before that he had been there.


	3. Chapter The Second

CHAPTER THE SECOND

Days passed. Weeks even. I decided not to tell anyone about what I saw on the film. The camera was broken, that was all. Nothing more, nothing less. Must have been broken when I bought it, I said, I'll return it as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, the temperature outside grew unbearable in its heat and intensity. It became so sweltering, in fact, that I was forced to remove my wool trench coat from my wardrobe choices. But not my hat. No, never the hat.

Before long everyone was gabbing on about the heat. All-time highs, and such and such. Maybe there was something to it after all, but I never paid much mind. It was a nice change of pace; like living on the beach. If it weren't for all the gossip I might have genuinely enjoyed myself.

"The _whole world's_ ending." People said in passing, whispering into ears behind hands like old crows, "Isn't it just _dreadful_! Why, I reckon that soon there'll be no ice left to drink with!"

The weather was by far the least of my worries. It was impeccable timing, really. If any event in the wide, wide _world_ was so aligned with another one, it was the downward spiral of my sanity with the swelling of the sun.

"Hey." I announced my presence at the lunch table with my usual greeting, giving a nod and sitting down beside Kim to eat. Per the normal, she had her nose buried deeply into one of her crime books. It was a mystery. Probably something that included Sherlock Holmes.

"Oh, Adriane." May laughed nervously, "How's it going?"

I raised an eyebrow. What was with the flightiness today? Seemed like everyone was on their toes, jumping on one foot around some invisible pile of shattered glass I didn't see.

"Check it out." Tyler chuckled darkly, tossing something in my direction. Crumpled pieces of paper. I unfolded them carefully and smoothed them out of the table's surface with practiced fingers. "We found them in our locker this morning. Creepy, huh?"

"Yeah…creepy." I commented drily. Someone, in big, sloppy, thick handwriting had scrawled the words: FOLLOWS ME. How cliché. If this was some stupid freshman prank, I was sick of it already.

What do you think?" Tyler asked mischievously.

"I think someone has too much time on their hands." I muttered. Kim grinned from the shadow of the book pages and looked up for a moment.

"A girl after my own heart." She agreed, "They both think it's real."

"Who?"

"May and Tyler." She smiled and went back to her book. I laughed aloud once; a loud, punctuated noise that pierced the rambunctious lunch-time air of the cafeteria. Everyone glanced up at me from their books or meals or both. May clutched her hands tighter, nearly knotting them together in fright.

"As if!" I spat, "You guys are being weird. There's nothing wrong. It's just a stupid note. What are you all worried for?"

"I'm not." Jesse grimaced, "You're right, this is bogus."

"See?" I said, as if that proved my point.

"But…they found a note like this with Suzy's body…" May shuddered at the thought, gulping before she continued. I speared a carrot on my plastic fork and waved it before my mouth. I was much too deep in thought to be considering eating the thing, but the gesture exuded apathy nonetheless. "What if we're next? They never caught the killer, Addie! Not even a trace of him."

"He probably committed suicide ad the police never put the evidence together." Kim spoke up, "It happens more than you would think. People go back ten years later and see it then. After all, wouldn't you want to kill yourself after murdering a little girl like that?"

"…yeah…I guess." May admitted.

"You wouldn't have killed her in the first place." Jesse consoled.

"Well, maybe you guys are right." Tyler shrugged, grabbing the papers back from me, "But, you might be wrong too. You know, last night, I thought I saw something in my room."

"Me too!" May cried, "Oh, it's true, it's true! This is so awful!"

"Oh, shut it!" I burst, briskly removing myself from the table. The chair I'd previously been seated on slid out from behind me in a rush, and my fork-and-carrot combination clattered to my plate. Everyone gaped blankly at me. They certainly weren't used to this kind of behavior coming from me, of all people. "There's nothing to worry about! Look, it's a nice day outside! I'm going to go have lunch outside in the sun, where nobody is complaining like a sissy girl! If you want to join me, leave your dumb superstitions behind, along with your garbage, where they belong!"

I snapped up my plate and stomped from the scene, biting my lip to keep the truth from spilling out of my mouth like bad water. They couldn't know. They shouldn't know.

There was no way I was dragging them into this.

Days grew longer with the suspicion and the heat. May and Tyler became even more and more paranoid as the notes continued to roll in. They claimed to see shadows in their windows at night. Most times, I wanted very badly to agree. But I felt as if I hadn't the right. As if there was some sort of secret to all this…and I couldn't bear to give it up. This wasn't their problem. It was mine. All mine. No one should be allowed to have this but me.

That's when I noticed it.

The change.

What was happening to me? And…the others around me? It made me shudder to think about it. I don't know exactly why, but I wasn't feeling right. This all felt…off. That day, I went home from school early. I'd deserved it. Only a few days left anyway, right?

Right.

The warmth that spread around me as I sat outside on the park bench waiting for Kim—she was supposed to be riding with me that day, so I was kind of restricted—was oppressive. My head was pounding. I pressed a finger to my temple and gritted my teeth. The sun…this was too much.

Next thing I knew, the bell rang. How long had passed since I first sat down? People bustled around me, heading for their separate cars. Someone tapped me on the shoulder. The whole world spun in terrifying, awe-inspiring ways. Like an optical illusion. It hurt to look at, but I couldn't help it.

There was a hand on my shoulder suddenly. My delicate, beautiful, horrible world shattered and fell in heaps around me. I was left with the screaming of newly released teenagers, a sun too bright to be safe, and the worried eyes of Kimberly as she gripped my shoulders and shook me back to the real world.

"Hey? Are you okay?" She asked, "You look out of it. You could've just gone home, you know. I could've called my dad. You didn't have to wait two hours."

"It's been two hours?" I mumbled.

"Uhhh…yeah." Kim grimaced, "You have the sunburn to prove it." I looked down at my arms as she said so. Sure enough, they were bright red and the sudden realization of a burning sensation crawled underneath my skin. I winced and pulled myself away. Just in time to get side-swiped by some lunatic who came hurtling out of the school, screaming bloody murder. Agitated and angry, I whirled and caught them by the wrist.

"Hey, what do you think you—" I paused. It was May. She looked as if she'd seen a ghost.

"Let go, let go, let go!" She screamed and writhed in my grip. I complied and May tore away, disappearing around to the corner lot and the woods beyond. A minute later, Tyler cannoned out after her. Kim and I exchanged a glance.

"What do you think that was about?" I sighed, restraining the headache I could feel coming back. I put aspirin on my lists of things to scrounge out of my cupboard when I got home.

Kimberly shrugged and squinted her eyes shut. "I dunno, Adriane. Probably something stupid. You know how they've been."

"Yeah." I laughed, "You're right."


	4. Chapter The Third

CHAPTER THE THIRD

Don't tell them, Adriane. Don't do that.

I kept telling myself this over the week. Day and night, hour after hour. Dreading the next morning when I'd have to face my friends again. The friends that had been thrown into chaos and toyed with by miscellaneous…creatures….things…all because of a silly comedy meet.

All because of me.

May was gone. She'd disappeared and she never came back. Tyler too. Nobody knew where they went. And for some, it was as if they'd never even existed. The first day I thought she had been just plain sick. Maybe the heat got her too, maybe it was a heatstroke. I'd taken her homework from the day to her house. Her parents shook their heads and stared at me in disbelief.

"We don't have a daughter." Her mother stated, honest as day, "I've never heard of the girl you're talking about? Are you sure she didn't live here before us?"

"Sorry, miss." The father gruffly dismissed, "Better luck somewhere else."

Kim didn't say much, but I could read her like one of her old detective novels. Inside that brunette head of hers, gears were turning and shifting in places that they hadn't been before. Where no gears should ever move. Still, she didn't question me. Not then, at least.

Jesse, on the other hand, was a mess. A sniveling, wallowing mess. I didn't know that May even meant that much to him. Apparently she did. She meant more to him than she meant to her own parents.

"I should've listened…" He sobbed to me after school one day, while I was waiting in my SUV for Kim to show up. "…She was trying to warn me this would happen, Addie, but I wouldn't listen! What a bad boyfriend I make…"

"You're better than her parents." I muttered, "They don't even remember her."

"…Well, I better go…" Jesse broke off abruptly. He turned away from my open window in distraction and ran off, leaving me absolutely at a loss for words. What was everybody's problem these days?! That's not how you end a conversation with someone who'd been your friend since before he could speak intelligibly…My hands wrapped up around the supple material of my steering wheel in absent-minded frustration. There was a knock on the opposite window and I jolted to it. Oh. Just Kim. I unlocked the passenger side door and she climbed up into the seat. No sooner had she done so than she kicked up her heels on my dash and whipped a book out of her backpack. Nancy Drew? Wasn't that baby stuff for her? Whatever. She was probably just re-reading it to live her youth again. I rolled my eyes and pulled the car into the proper gear, heading out of the parking lot.

"No comment." Kim mumbled blankly, way ahead of schedule.

"About what?" I shot back, not taking my eyes from the road, "I didn't even say anything to you."

She frowned and glanced up from the yellowed pages of Nancy Drew. The edges of her thin glasses flickered in the light speckling from the forest drive. "I know you didn't. But you were thinking it."

"Thinking what?" I narrowed my eyes.

"Thinking that this was your fault, Adriane." Kim stated plainly, "Because you didn't tell me or anyone else what was on that video."

I slammed on the brakes prematurely. Kim hadn't been expecting this—what a miracle—and all of her belongings flew to the floor in a messy heap. She'd also neglected to strap herself into the seat, so she fell with them. In a less tense situation, I might have spared a laugh. But not now.

"How." I blurted out angrily. Not a question. Just a word. A word that—in all its magnificent potency—made me sound much more lethal than I actually was.

"I'm the one who edited together the blanks for the school fair, idiot." She scowled, brushing herself off as she clambered back into her seat, "And the blank you sent in was the original. My guess is that you forgot until the last second and figured that no one would notice or care."

I don't know what made me madder; the fact that she was entirely right or the fact that she was so secretly smug about it. If you were going to be that poignant, there was no need to be coy about it.

"There was nothing on that video." I lied poorly.

"After the way you reacted, I highly doubt it."

I gritted my teeth. She'd baited the line, and I'd taken it in one single gulp—hook, line, and sinker.

How had I not seen that trap coming? I must really be slipping. I had to pull myself together somehow…but how? And what was happening to me and May and Tyler and…everyone? Why us? What was REALLY in the video?

Then, like a proclamation from heaven:

"Do you want me to tell you what was IN that video you tried to hide, Adriane?" Kim offered nonchalantly, flipping back through her book to find her page. She stopped somewhere around 100 and kicked back against the dash once more. Acting as if she had said nothing.

"…"

"Do you?"

"Shoot." I grimaced deeply.

"Ever read up on German mythology?" She smirked, "Yes, no?"

"What do you think?" I rolled my eyes.

"I'll take that as a no…" Kim chuckled, then: "Fortunately, I have. What you captured looks a lot like what we in America call a slenderman, Adriane."

"Slenderman?" I scoffed, "Sounds like a load of crap to me. What does he do? Cinch your waist in? Haunt your wardrobe?"

"He takes children and hangs their entrails from trees in the forest."

"Hmph."

"Quite." She commented drily, "So, about May…"

"Get out of my car."

"What?!"

"Get out of my car." I ordered, "I need space. Get out. Get out now."

Without another word, Kim popped open her door and pushed her things out of the floor space and into the tangled brush on the side of the road. I sped off as soon as she slammed the door.

There was nothing left to say.

* * *

I settled into my bed much later at night than I should have; sleep was hard to come by for some reason, and I found with a start that I was becoming extremely paranoid of the smallest things. I kept my door open just a crack, left the hall light on so I could be sure that nothing was blocking it. My window was tightly shut. The blinds were drawn to the point of nearly breaking. I took my video camera, flushed all of the older videos onto my laptop, and set it up on the tripod to get a good view of the door. Sometime near midnight I crawled into bed. However, sleep still eluded me at every turn. I tried switching on some 'sounds of nature' on my alarm clock. Those usually helped. Nothing. I switched them back off again. Turned on my lights, paced around the room, turned them back off, got back in bed. It was two o'clock now. Where had the time gone? Luckily, I had no school nor work in the morning. But, still. The argument with Kim burned fresh in my mine. A slender man. Somebody who took children and hung them in the trees. Maybe so close that I could run into the woods behind my house and see one. The murder of Suzy Walker. The unsolved crime. The slender man in the suit. The one from my video capture.

What was happening?

Why me?

Sometime around three in the morning, I finally passed out from exhaustion. Nightmares of hanging children plagued me. The forest was on fire. I was burning. There were others too. I reached out to one. They reached back. Something like tendrils of ivy curved around my hands where we touched. They pulled me in. I screamed.

_Adriane. Adriane. Adriane. _

_ Fables? Do you believe in…bedtime stories?_

_ The Fear is here. It's coming for you._

I woke up gasping, screaming. Quickly, I shot out of bed and glanced around. Nothing was any different. Except, the camera was knocked over. It buzzed softly where it rested on the wood flooring. Sprinting out of bed, I quickly made my way over to the only thing I could think of: The window. It had to be the window. I pulled the blinds up.

Nothing. It was morning. The sun painted the sky behind the tree line all different shades of pink. Breathtaking, really. I watched them for a while—not out of awe, not the sky. I watched the trees. They swayed softly in the breeze. Cracked with the wind.

"Hello?" I whispered, out of curiosity and nothing more.

Nothing answered back, but it was more of a response than any word could have given me.

Sighing, I walked back over to the camera and picked it up off the ground. Nothing appeared to have touched it; there was not a scratch on its surface. I brushed it off and snapped the chords into their proper place, shook it up a bit as if that would give it back its orientation, and rewound the tape.

At around three, the same time I'd fallen into my deep slumber, a figure stepped out of the darkness of the woods beyond my window and blocked out the moonlight. They appeared to grope the edges of the window and then pace around its perimeter once. Then, in seeming defeat, the figure lifted its thin shape onto the sill and sat there, staring out at the woods again. They whistled once. Then the camera listed sideways and the video feed cut out.

* * *

"Adriane? Are you coming to school today?" The voice recording woke me from my fitful sleep the next morning. School? Today? Wasn't it Sunday? "You've been gone for three days. I wish you'd return my calls…Anyway, I'm sorry for losing my temper in the car back there on Friday. We need to talk…Yeah. So, please call back soon." A metallic beep announced that the message was over. I rolled out of my sheets and was about to pick up the phone when I caught sight of my alarm clock. 11:30? I never slept in that late. Wait a minute…

Did that say…May 23? That meant that not only was the last day of school tomorrow…but I'd slept for four days straight. Or had I? My muscles and bones held the stiffness of a long day's work. Of running and jumping hurtles on a track. The tension of scratched skin scathed my inner framework, and I groaned as I pulled myself to my feet. My little camera sat on my computer desk, chord winding out of it, as if I'd been too tired to complete the motion and plug it into the laptop that sat there. Something was on the foot of my bed. There was a sealed envelope with no address resting on top of the thing; a hard-cased folio of sorts. Stretching, trying to work the kinks out of my body, I walked over to it and nearly stumbled. Ow. I lifted up the leg of my sleeping pants. A long, fresh scratch wheeled its way up my calf and to the bend in my knee, caked in stale blood and dirt. I'd need to clean that. But, more importantly, where'd it come from?

What had happened while I slept? I'd never known myself to sleepwalk.

First thing first, I should probably return Kim's call...I thought to myself, But I don't want to. Lately, grudges had become harder to let go of—this revelation did not come as a hard thing to swallow for me. No, I reveled in it. I loved the idea of forgetting about Kim, the one who doubted my abilities to act alone from the very start, and doing things my own way. Problem was, how should I act now and where should I go first. That folio seemed like it could hold some sort of answer, so that was the second thing I considered. Pushing back a triumphant smile and seating myself on the corner of my bed, I grabbed the unopened envelope and ripped it open with eager finger. There was a little slip of paper inside. I removed it and read it in my head.

Abandoned Power Plant. Today. 3:00 PM.

Okay, then. I'd try my best to be punctual.

Next, my hand reached for the folio. I unlatched the top and swung it open. Something clattered to my feet and on an instinct I reached down a retrieved it. The object was a small, matte-black painted symbol that resembled something of a railroad crossing sign. Okay. So they wanted me to be hit by a train. That's fine and dandy. I pinned it to my sleep clothes and went on with the rest of the folio's contents.

The first thing I saw was a map. It was old and wrinkled and crumbling, but it was a map nonetheless. On it, in bright red ink that seemed to contrast with the rest of the landscape, were circled locations. Only problem was, this map was so old that the city had changed entirely from when it was released. In the area where Tyler and May and Jesse and Kim lived, a huge forest blotted out most of anything familiar. I nearly forgot about that; that there used to be woods where neighborhoods were now. Something was circled in the woods, but I couldn't be sure of its exact location without familiar landmarks. Then, there was a circle around the old power plant, with a tinier X within the building. I only could assume that was something important, and planned on visiting it later. Lucky me, that plant shut down nearly seven years ago. There was another X in a little barn—something that still actually existed. That was Mr. Barker's barn, the big red one off the side of the highway run over with weeds and debris. The roof had caved in last year during a bad storm, and nobody had bothered to fix it, seeing as how Mr. Barker and his wife had both died of natural causes the year before. They had been older than old and lived a very good life. The whole dang town had gone to their funeral. I wondered briefly why the barn had been circled. Nothing was there anymore. The city'd had a house sale when the Barker's passed away. Anything of value was sold to the highest bidder. Still, I'd probably check it out just to be safe. Last though. Definitely not first. Not only was that place most likely under quarantine, but it gave me the creeps every time I drove by.

Slowly, as to not break the thing into a million little fragments of coffee-stained paper, I peeled the map from the folio and found that it was actually quite sturdy. Carefully, I folded it up and put it aside. Behind it there was another letter. This one had no envelope to hold it, it had been merely taped to the back of the folio. I pried it off with anticipation prickling every point of my fingertips and glanced it over.

_Adriane._

_I met you once. But you forgot. At the Third Arrow, remember?_

_You're marked. Watch out._

_If you wish to save your friends, you must do exactly as I tell you._

_First though, leave the house. You know where to go. You've already been there. _

**_Sees you._**

_-A_

A, huh? A little mysterious and over the top, if I did say so myself. But I was one for theatrics, and was ceaselessly entertained by this note and the freedom it brought me. Not the humanitarian kind of liberty crossed with freedom I was raised on. But some sort of animalistic freedom I hadn't been aware of before. There was a world beyond the woods where secrets lay.

And I wanted to be the first to find it. Before Kim.

She couldn't know about this. This was all mine.


End file.
